That was the thought running through my head as I hurriedly threw on a shirt and tie, having live blogged the results all night, before taking the Tube to Downing Street at 8.15am.

The adrenaline was still pumping after eating toast and tea as a pick-me-up. I could do this, I told myself. I could wait however long it took for Theresa May to turn up and give her resignation speech.

It turned out that most of the world’s media had thought to do the same. Not having passes, some were locked outside the main gates to Downing Street, forced to give their ditties and pieces of insight to camera in front of the railings.

Outside 10 Downing Street

I nudged on through, flashed my pass and went through Downing Street security, only to find whole congregations of television, radio and newspaper journalists taking up every dot of pavement or space on the makeshifts scaffolds in the Press enclosure.

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It was still only 8.45am at this point. I’d started work nearly 24 hours before. But this was what reporting on elections was all about – the excitement, the exhaustion, the slight feeling of delirium. That feeling of ‘I was there’ as history unfolded.

After finding a perch alongside a few sleep-deprived Westminster sketch writers, every now and then a ripple of excitement would unfurl and the photographers would keenly start snapping.

It turned out it was only Larry, the Number 10 cat, who’d started parading himself for the cameras. The prancer.

The expectation had been that Mrs May would put us out of our misery, one way or another, by 10am.

Rumours had intensified that she was planning to hang on as Prime Minister, despite losing her majority. It would be Northern Irish party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who she’d ask to prop her up apparently.

MPs I contacted either didn’t know or were keeping schtum. Others said they thought it was impossible for her to stay.

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10am came and went and, with it, the blue skies of the early morning. A light drizzle turned into a downpour just as the announcement rang out that Mrs May would go to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace at 12.30pm.

Relief all-round. We could safely go for sausage butties and mugs of tea before returning to the elements to wait.

When I returned to the enclosure, the horde of journalists, photographers, cameramen, press officers and police had swollen in number.

Photographers jostled for elbow room, dishing-out menacing-glares to anyone who cut across their shot.

Broadcasters spoke in languages I hadn’t heard before, apparently with viewers halfway across the globe who were interested in the mess Blighty had found itself in.

As the gates opened and the flashing blue police motorbikes gave way for the Prime Minister’s silver car, the clicking of cameras became incessant.

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The car came to a standstill a little before the house, with Mrs May’s husband Philip getting out first before the sombre looking Tory leader, dressed in a daring blue skirted suit, exited the car and headed for the awaiting podium.

What’s hard to describe is just how difficult it was to hear a word that the PM was saying with the whirr of the police helicopter overhead and the clacking of cameras.

And no sooner had she begun, it seemed the speech was wrapping up. It was apparent she wasn’t resigning but all I was getting was clippets: “Manchester”, “It’s clear”, “greatest number of seats”, “we will deliver”.

With that, Mrs May and her husband stepped back into their home, through that famous black door, accompanied by the sound of staff clapping within, while the rest of us looked blankly at each other.

As we got down from our footstools, a colleague next to me turned and exclaimed: “I couldn’t hear a bloody word”.